Traditional search mechanisms are based on keyword matching by creating indexes on various text elements. Thus, a user can only perform searches based on keywords that match data elements contained in an index. For example a user may search for “Quarterly Revenue”.
In a conventional index based search, a search engine will index data elements and only those elements which have the words “Quarterly”, “Revenue”, or any combinations of the above will show up on the search result. This approach doesn't consider the fact that in technical systems an element name may be different than a business terminology. In other words, the corresponding database table that stores the “Quarterly Revenue” may be called “QTR_SALES_REV” and thus in a conventional index based search, the database table QTR_SALES_REV that stored the “Quarterly Revenue” will not be returned.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a system and method to expand a conventional index based search to return greater amounts of relevant data.